Tuesday, October 19, 2010

As a class, we reiterated over and over again that gender is NOT a binary system. So, it made me think about systems that force a person to be placed in a gender box, such as the prison system. This article was about how transgender women are place in all-male prison cells. Many are faced with sexual harassment and authority figures fail to do something about it. Supposedly, Sgt. Lou Fatur, of the Sacramento's Sheriff department claims that transgender people are separated and protected. This obviously is not the case if there have been cases of transgender people suing the state because they were not protected. The article claims,

Most prisons have some form of "administrative segregation" for some inmates, but the facilities typically involve reduced privileges and are more expensive to runs

O.K.? I will fully admit that I'm not knowledgeable about the prison system, but is it possible for every cell in the whole prison to be filled, or couldn't you at lease move people around to protect a transgender person? ...or maybe authority figures are just being jerks and could careless.

1st...sorry for the post from my additional blogger account. Just disregard that......Yeah it is an extremely complicated issue. One that requires time, money and effort. Yet in patriarchal society today privilege and priority override issues such as this everyday. However, after our reading today I would definitely say another problem within the prison system is that so many people are in prison for petty crimes and crimes that are only to help people survive because they are not as privileged as others and do not have the same accessibility. Rather than soaring numbers of prisoners being murders and rapist, they are instead attempting to feed themselves and families and in return are punished.